The soundtrack contains all of the background music and sound effects used in the games, all of which were composed solely by [[Junichi Masuda]]. This includes {{OBP|Pokémon|species}} [[Cry|cries]] and [[Pokédex]] entries read by "Dexter", {{Ash}}'s Pokédex.

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==Beta elements==

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{{main|Pokémon Red and Green beta}}

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Pokémon Red and Green had many beta elements prior to their release, although Pokémon Red and Blue would later have several altered aspects of their own during the two-and-a-half years between the release of Red and Green, their bug-fixing release, {{game|Blue| (Japanese)|Japanese Blue}}, and the release of the merger between the Japanese games into Red and Blue for overseas markets.

Pocket Monsters: Red (Japanese: ポケットモンスター 赤) and Pocket Monsters: Green (Japanese: ポケットモンスター 緑) were the first Pokémon games ever released to the public, in Japan on February 27, 1996. Introducing the gameplay concepts that went on to provide the standard for games in the main series games, these games were eventually localized and released worldwide as Pokémon Red and Blue Versions, using a combination of the engine from Pocket Monsters: Blue (Japanese: ポケットモンスター 青) and the obtainable Pokémon from Red & Green. Much as would become standard, Red & Green were later joined by a third version, Blue, which slightly improved upon their features and provided the code for the international releases of Red and Blue, and eventually Pocket Monsters: Pikachu (Japanese: ポケットモンスター ピカチュウ), a fourth version based on the anime.

Along the way, Trainers will encounter the evil Team Rocket, a group of criminals that seek to exploit Pokémon, rather than train them as friends and partners, and must defeat them to put a stop to their actions. The rival will also continuously harass the player, challenging him to battle over and over, with an increasingly powerful team. As the player's own Pokémon become more powerful, they draw ever closer to Indigo Plateau.

Connectivity

The two games introduced the ability to allow players to trade Pokémon between two cartridges using a Game Boylink cable. To take fullest advantage of this feature, several Pokémon are exclusive to each game of the pair, making it required that a player trade with others in order to complete their Pokédex. The link cable also makes possible battles with another player, allowing one to pit their Pokémon against equals when their Pokémon are as powerful as they can be, at level 100. Trades done between Pokémon games in different languages are impossible in this generation, and will always result in corruption if it is attempted. This is due to the fact that the games can't automatically translate the Pokémon as there isn't enough room on either cartridge for all of the text in so many languages (a feature that would later become possible).
If a battle between two different region games is to be attempted, the battle would simply not work, with the save file left intact.

Pokémon

Each game contains pre-recorded data on 151 different species of Pokémon, including Mew, a Pokémon even Nintendo was not aware of initially.[citation needed] Despite this, not all Pokémon are available to the player, regardless of version; trades must occur between players in order to complete their Pokédex without the use of cheats or glitches. Mew is the only Pokémon in these games that must be acquired through attending either a Nintendo sponsored event, a glitch, or cheating.

The following Pokémon are only obtainable in one game of this pair. In order to obtain Pokémon exclusive to the other game of this pair, they must be traded either from that game or from another compatible game of Generation I or Generation II which has that Pokémon available.

Legacy

Pocket Monsters Red and Green set the precedent for what has become a blockbuster, multi-billion dollar franchise. In Japan, Red, Green, and the third version Blue combined have sold 10.23 million copies.[2] In the United States, Pokémon Red has sold 4.83 million copies, while Pokémon Blue has sold 5.02 million copies.[3] These numbers combine to make a total of 9.85 million copies sold in the US.

Staff

Music

The soundtrack contains all of the background music and sound effects used in the games, all of which were composed solely by Junichi Masuda. This includes Pokémoncries and Pokédex entries read by "Dexter", Ash's Pokédex.

Beta elements

Pokémon Red and Green had many beta elements prior to their release, although Pokémon Red and Blue would later have several altered aspects of their own during the two-and-a-half years between the release of Red and Green, their bug-fixing release, Japanese Blue, and the release of the merger between the Japanese games into Red and Blue for overseas markets.

Trivia

Development of Red and Green started during 1990, making their development the longest of all Pokémon games by far.

The game's main characters Red and Green have several default names, among them サトシ Satoshi and シゲル Shigeru, respectively. These names come from Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri and his friend and fellow Nintendo developer, Shigeru Miyamoto. When the games were translated into the English Red and Blue, the defaults became Red and Blue. Alternative names that could be chosen were Ash and Gary, after the anime characters that share the names Satoshi and Shigeru, respectively.

While Red and Green are the first Pokémon games released, they were not necessarily the first Pokémon trademark ever registered. Mew was the first Pokémon trademark ever applied for; the application for the Pokémon was submitted on May 9, 1990, while the application for Pocket Monsters Red and Green was submitted on September 11, 1995. Before Red and Green were granted registered trademarks on December 26, 1997, Mew (then spelled ミュー, not ミュウ) had already become the first Pokémon trademark registered, granted on March 31, 1994; ミュウ was later granted on August 6, 1999.

The storyline of Kanto introduced in these games has the honor of being the most available storyline of all games, being featured in six separate games: Blue, Yellow, FireRed and LeafGreen, in addition to Red and Green and not counting the post-Elite Four storyline in Kanto during Generation II and IV.

Although Pokémon Crystal was the only version whose name included the term "Version" in Japanese, the term was used in English on the back covers and the title screen of Red and Green as well as in the Japanese Blue.

The same situation occurs with the Japanese versions of Yellow, Gold and Silver, except it does not appear on the title screen.

Red and Green are the only Generation I games that inform the player that in order to save the game, the current save file has to be overwritten. Curiously, this only happens in the first attempt to save.

Mew was added to the programming after the debug features were removed. The programmers took a great risk in doing so, because they couldn't test the game for glitches that would have been caused by adding Mew. Programmers usually never do this, because they can't know if the added code is going to cause major glitches or not.